Saturday, June 11, 2011

If your group wants to have a banner of support put up in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island send the text and organization's logo to me at globalnet@mindspring.com and the villagers will print the banner. Send a donation of $30 for the banner to the Global Network using the secure Donate Now! button on our website. MacGregor Eddy will make all the arrangments to print the banner right there in the village.

MacGregor says, "It is very important to the people here. It is hard to describe what life is like. Every single day, 24 hours a day, the villagers are on watch around the clock."

On May 22, thousands of supporters of America’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, converged on Washington for the group’s annual conference. For two days they watched Democratic and Republican congressional leaders pledge their undivided loyalty to the state of Israel, and by extension, to AIPAC’s legislative agenda. Speeches by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the conference, with Obama attempting to clarify his statement demanding that 1967 borders be the “starting point” for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

MacGregor Eddy and Sung-Hee Choi's mom at the jailNew Secretary of War Leon Panetta appears before Congressional committee with CodePink activists protesting behind him holding Bring Our War $$ Home signs. This photo appeared in the Los Angeles Times

MacGregor's news from Jeju Island this morning is disturbing. She reports:

High points. Sung-Hee first lawyer would not do as Sung-Hee wanted. She is changing attorneys today. She is fasting again. Her mother, Yune, Mr Ko and I all visited her. She looks terrible. It is shocking. Weeping mother begged her to eat. Professor Yang is also fasting again. He looks skeletal.

We just came from the blocked gates . The Daemin construction company brought equipment in in the pouring rain at 3 am. After taking down all the banners, and opening the gate, they carefully hung all the banners back up!

Every day is a constant effort to block the construction. By both sea and land. The Jeju Island Council (Congress) voted to stop the construction of the base yesterday. Now it is up to the governor. The governor is on tour, he will be in Japan on June 12 -17 in Osaka.

We are all over the tweets, People who speak no English were showing me my own photo on Twitter.

If your group wants to have a banner of support put up here in Gangjeong village send the text and emblem to Bruce, and the villagers will make the banner. I have some money from GN with me, just send the donation of $30 for banner to the Global Network on the website. I can give the money for that and any other group that wants to make a banner. It is very important to the people here. It is hard to describe what life is like. Every single day, 24 hours a day, the villagers are on watch around the clock.

Sung Hee was very glad to see me. She is only allowed 10 minutes for all four of us, so most of the time was for her mother who lives in Inchon, and is leaving today. She got my letter that I wrote last week. Tell everyone to write her. Address in jail is:

Please get others to call the South Korean embassy or consulate in your country. These calls are more important than ever.

Last Thursday Obama's new Secretary of War Leon Panetta was questioned by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) during his nomination hearings in Washington. Collins pressed Panetta about Navy shipbuilding plans and urged him to support growing the fleet from the present 285 ships to reach the Navy's goal of 313 ships.

“Based on Mr. Panetta’s response to my questions, I believe that he fully appreciates the number of ships we need in order for the Navy to accomplish its mission and to support our shipbuilding industrial base,” Collins said in a statement issued Thursday night to The Times Record. “During our private meeting in my office last month, we discussed the need for consistent shipbuilding funding in order for the Pentagon to achieve its plan for a stronger Navy.”

“I strongly believe the Navy has to project our force throughout the world and that the Navy is obviously crucial to that mission,” Panetta replied to Collins. “I agree with the ship numbers that have to be developed for the Navy in order to be able to do that.”

Collins and Panetta talk about these ships defending the nation and U.S. troops deployed overseas. They have to publicly maintain the myth about the Pentagon's mission being one of "defense". But we know otherwise.

Collins is most interested in destroyers because that is what they build at Bath Iron Works here in Maine. And destroyers are not about defense. They are vital instruments in the overall U.S. planning for first-strike attack and are being used today to help militarily encircle Russia and China.

This growth in Navy shipbuilding, even when the U.S. economy is collapsing, provides further evidence that America's role under corporate globalization of the world economy will be "security export". It is our job here in the U.S. to build and sell weapons and to attack and occupy any country that does not comply with the dictates of the global corporate agenda.

As these additional ships are built the Navy needs more ports in and around Russia and China. Thus the recent visit to a Romanian port on the Black Sea by a U.S. Aegis destroyer carrying "missile defense" interceptors onboard. And thus, sadly, the pressure by the U.S. government on South Korea to build the Navy base on Jeju Island - one more port of call for this growing fleet of warships. In this case within easy reach of the Chinese mainland.

Friday, June 10, 2011

The current Director of the CIA and former Congressman is set for Senate approval, but some insiders believe the confirmation hearing of Leon Panetta as the new Pentagon chief could highlight plans to rein in federal military spending.

Defense-industry officials, lobbyists and Congressional aides and Washington insiders have all predicted Panetta will either accelerate or possibly increase US military and Pentagon spending cuts over the next 10 years.

Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates has stuck up for stable military spending. Panetta on the hand comes from a background of cutting waste and decreasing spending.

Those weary of defense cuts are worried Panetta's background as Clinton's budget director added to the anti-spending climate in Congress could lead to large program cuts.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern explained many activists had great hopes for Panetta and his reform ideas to make the CIA more open and transparent, but in the end he continued much of the status quo.

This has some worried that Panetta will not make enough changes at the Pentagon.

“If you’re looking for him to cut real spending from the defense budget, I’d say look very carefully. There’s lots of fat there, he’ll probably be able to cut some but he will not do anything to alienate the affections of his former colleagues in Congress,” McGovern said.

He explained that Panetta is a ‘man of congress’ and likely to make policy that keeps the mainstream happy, as opposed to issuing massive cuts and changing the funding of US programs.

MORE FROM JEJU ISLAND

Professor Yang Yoon-Mo left his hospital bed to join a news conference where many South Korean peace, justice, and reunification groups declared their support for the Gangjeong villagers in their effort to halt construction of the Navy base.

MacGregor Eddy reports from Jeju Island:

I am exhausted. In court Sung-Hee appeared thin and more distressing to her friends, quiet and passive. Next court date June 22 [so trial not over yet]. Professor Yang is skeletal but smiling. He left the hospital for the court and the community center bus returned him to the hospital.

There are banners all over the village. The head of the ssociation to stop the Navy base has asked that the GN send a banner to display. The construction of the naval base and destruction of the coral reef has been stopped today.

I started a water only fast at 8 am this morning at the blockade of the base construction entrance. Most villagers have to go to work, but if the Navy or the construction company start work a siren will go off and they will come to help.

Skip a meal today and use the time to call the nearest Korean embassy or consulate. Please send Bruce and me what they say exactly, and get the name of the person you talk to. This is very, very important.

Below video is Gangjeong Mayor Kang speaking. You can get a view of the scene along the coast.

Thursday, June 09, 2011

The Israeli government's ongoing siege of Gaza has had particularly devastating consequences for Gaza's roughly 3,000 fishermen. Although permitted by international law to fish within 20 miles of the Gaza coast, these fishermen are currently restricted to 3 miles by the Israeli navy, and as a direct result many have fallen into poverty. In addition, the fishermen report being frequently harassed by the Israeli navy.

MACGREGOR CHECKS IN FROM JEJU

On little sleep, Global Network board member MacGregor Eddy has arrived on Jeju Island and is already in the fray. Construction workers have moved out into the ocean to begin the process of dredging the sea bottom in order to make it possible for the big U.S. warships (aircraft carriers and Aegis destroyers) to visit the port. The endangered soft coral reefs will surely be destroyed.

It's time to call the Korean embassy in your country again. Make two points: Stop the dredging of the sea bed and release Sung-Hee Choi from jail now (she goes on trial June 10). In the U.S. please call 718-726-8688 .

MacGregor reports:

I am stunned to be here. Please spread the word. These brave Koreans are stopping the construction. There is no news media here except local.

Protesters went in a inflatable boat to ask the ship not to destroy the soft coral reef. They are being arrested, and possibly they were beaten, it is hard to see. More members are going out in boats. Greenpeace has Seoul office, but will not help, not even to publicize what is happening. Can Helen or someone talk to them right away?

People are cheerful and determined. The crew of the work boat did rough up the peaceful protesters, but no injuries. Dr Song is the hero. He made an agreement with the police and crew. No arrests today. No work on the construction of base and destruction of reef today.

Greenpeace was on Jeju Island last month. They were here to protect tuna. They refused to address the Naval base issue. What happened to The Rainbow Warrior of the past?

Here on the shore it is well organized and peaceful, there are groups of people chanting on the platform. They gave me a cup of tea and I gave messages of support.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

In Maine we are making plans for a 30-day Bring Our War $$ Home caravan through the state during September 11 - October 10. We are asking local groups to organize events during that period so that we can capture the public's imagination and build consciousness about the cost of war spending (now $2 billion per week in Afghanistan). While we have been successful in getting Reps. Pingree and Michaud to vote against war spending, our two senators from Maine are not with us. By concentrating on the public, and moving them from neutral into gear, we might be able to change that. We must at least do our best to try.

We are asking every peace group in Maine, and our allies in the social justice world, to send a representative to our next meeting that will be held on Saturday, June 25 from 9:30 am - 12:30 pm at the Railroad Square Cinema (17 Railroad Sq) in Waterville. Following the meeting Lisa Savage will be showing the film (Cultures of Resistance: a film by Lara Lee) at 12:45 pm. Bring your own lunch or there are lunch places just next door.

Let's make sure that Maine is moving in sync with the rest of the nation in October.

This is Arthur Brien who vigils each week outside the Raytheon plant in Andover, Massachusetts. He goes there in the rain, snow, and wind. Sometimes a few others join him. Often he stands alone.

The sign he holds refers to the "missile defense" systems (PAC-3 and SM-3) made by Raytheon that are being deployed by the Obama administration in Japan, South Korea, Romania, Poland and on-board Navy Aegis destroyers. The PAC-3 is the third generation Patriot interceptor and the SM-3 is the interceptor that is on the Aegis warships.

Because the SM-3 has had pretty good test results Obama has decided to also put these missiles on ground-based launchers (the Aegis ashore program they call it) and will use them to encircle Russia.

These PAC-3 and SM-3 missile offense systems are key elements in U.S. first-strike attack planning. Their job would be to take out Russian or Chinese nuclear missiles that would be fired in retaliation after an initial U.S. attack. Don't think for a minute that Russia or China falls for the "missile defense" rhetoric. They know these systems are for attack.

Arthur Brien belongs to the group called Merrimack Valley People for Peace, one of the key groups that will be hosting our Global Network conference on June 17-19 in Andover. We will kick the weekend confab off by holding at vigil at this very spot on Friday, June 17 from 3:00-5:00 pm. I am sure that Arthur will enjoy having a crowd with him on that day.

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Jeju Island supporters hold an action in Kimpo Airport in Seoul, South Korea

INTERNATIONAL STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF GANGJEONG VILLAGE

We, the undersigned organizations, stand in complete solidarity with the Gangjeong villagers on Jeju Island, South Korea in their struggle to stop the construction of a Navy base.

As we can already see, the Navy base construction effort has begun the destruction of this fishing and farming community’s natural way of life. This construction process will irreparably harm the soft coral reefs, the fish, the rocks, the vegetation, the water, and other life forms.

When Gangjeong supporters have called the South Korean embassy in Washington DC they have been repeatedly told, “Call the U.S. government. They are pushing us to build this Navy base.”

It is evident that as the U.S. expands its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region it needs more ports of call for its naval arsenal. China transports 80 percent of its oil on ships that pass through the Yellow Sea alongside Jeju Island. A base on Jeju Island would give the U.S. Navy greater access, and thus, potential control, of those shipping lanes.

The people of Jeju Island wish to be an island of peace. The building of a Navy base for U.S. warships will only make Jeju Island a target and a zone of conflict.

We demand that construction of the Navy base at Gangjeong be halted and the village be left to its natural state.

Monday, June 06, 2011

REFUGEES FROM WAR PUT IN JAIL

The European parliament will vote on whether Bulgaria and Romania can join the region's free travel zone, known as the Schengen agreement, this week.

The agreement allows people from member countries to travel without the need for any sort of visa.

In return for open borders in Europe, the European Union is demanding that Bulgaria makes it very difficult for people to immigrate from countries to its east like Turkey.

There's equipment that can tell if anyone is trying to breath in the back of a truck or to check for someone's heartbeat through metal walls

The strict measures have also led to the creation of Bulgarian migrant detention centres, designed to look like fortresses.

A group of detained Afghan women told Al Jazeera that they have put themselves and their children on a hunger strike against the inhumane conditions at the detention centre.

One of them said, "We want freedom. Our children haven't eaten for three days. We want to know what our fate is. We don't understand what will happen to us. This is torture. What have we done to deserve this?"

Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports from a detention centre in the first of our special series on European border controls.

The Catholic Diocese of Jeju Island has decided to hold a mass on the rocky coastline of Gangjeong village each Thursday in support of the opposition to the Navy base.

Global Network board member MacGregor Eddy (Salinas, California) flies to South Korea tomorrow. She will arrive in time to attend the June 10 trial of another GN board member Sung-Hee Choi. Sung-Hee gathered signatures of support from Korean activists after peace protesters were arrested at Vandenberg AFB in California a couple of years ago protesting space launches at events that MacGregor organized. MacGregor will stay in Gangjeong village with a local family and be there during our 19th annual space organizing conference. She will share videos and information from the village and we hope to be able to post some videos from the conference on the Internet that can be seen in Gangjeong.

I am speeding up my work on the June 17-19 conference and ticking off items on my long list that needs to get done before the event. Today I was getting our banners ready for the Friday, June 17 vigil that we will hold at Raytheon Company from 3-5 pm.

Looks like we'll have our members present at the confab from at least eight countries.

GN board member Regina Hagen (Germany) will come here to Maine sometime this weekend or early next week for a visit before we head to Andover, Massachusetts for the conference. While here I will do an interview with her for my public access TV show This Issue. Rarely do I get to have an international perspective on the show so I don't want to miss that opportunity. GN member Eric Herter (Brunswick), who produces the show, will film the interview which we will have to do at our kitchen table because we couldn't get studio time during her visit.

GN board member Lynda Williams (California) has suggested we consider holding our annual space organizing conference in Hawaii next year. Hawaii is a major "missile defense" testing area so peace groups there are very interested in discussing the possibility of hosting the event. Lynda has family in Hawaii and will pursue this idea when she visits them in the near future. If we have our meeting in Hawaii I imagine it will be the most attended conference ever! Bring your surfboards, mask, and snorkel.

We are very lucky in that we have a great core of leaders in the GN from around the world. We've become like a family in all these years of working together. But it's not a clique as everyone goes out of their way to always be welcoming to new people who come into the group. We know that the issue of space weaponization is so vast that we've got to keep building and keep extending a welcoming hand to new friends.

Sunday, June 05, 2011

LOCKING UP THE UNEMPLOYED AND SUPERFLUOUS POPULATIONS

IRAN NEXT TARGET?

In his latest article for The New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the United States might attack Iran based on distorted estimates of Iran’s nuclear and military threat—just like it did with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Hersh reveals that despite using Iranian informants and cutting-edge surveillance technology, U.S. officials have been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center.

MB and I went to Augusta yesterday for our Bring Our War $$ Home planning meeting. We had 14 folks present from around the state and we got some good work done in that three-hour meeting.

We did a bunch of brainstorming about the next steps for the campaign. Lisa Savage recorded three full pages of ideas on paper as we each threw our thinking up onto the wall. We took a poll to see how each person felt about the various ideas that we had posted. We were looking for common themes that might help direct us toward some unified activities.

One action that really resonated with me was a recent California caravan through the state that ended up with a week long teachers union occupation of their state capital. I proposed that we do something similar here in Maine. Calling it, for now, the Pilgrimage from Poverty, I suggested we start at Kittery Naval shipyard on the Maine-New Hampshire border and work our way north stopping along the way to leaflet about student tuition increases at colleges, meeting with local elected officials and poor peoples organizations, leafletting at BIW, bannering at highway overpasses, and a whole lot more. People seemed to like the idea since it would incorporate virtually every idea on our comprehensive list. I suggested the event could take place between September 11 - October 6 making it a focused 27 days of intense anti-war activity up and down the state. Local people and groups could plug in what worked best for them.

We decided to meet again soon and to invite every peace group in the state to send a representative to to help flesh this idea out. So we set the date of June 25 to meet in Waterville from 9:30-12:30.

After we finished the meeting in Augusta MB and I jumped in the car and drove south to York, Maine where members of the Massachusetts Veterans for Peace were having a BBQ at the summer house of one of their leaders. We arrived just in time to eat and I was able to have five minutes to talk about the Global Network's upcoming space organizing conference in Andover, Ma. on June 17-19. We've got leaders coming from eight countries and people are now starting to register in greater numbers which is a relief to me since I have the impossible task of ordering three meals during the event.

We've got some great speakers and musicians going to be at this event. Of particular interest to people will be the discussions about current U.S. global military strategy and the new trends in robotic, nanotechnology, and cyber warfare. Also going to have an exciting workshop where three women student leaders are going to speak about space technology developments impact on social progress. One of the young women is from India.